


Angus McDonald and the Case of the Dimensional Dagger

by inkedinserendipity



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, implied taakitz - Freeform, taako has feelings about zero people (he's lying through his teeth)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-06
Updated: 2018-12-17
Packaged: 2019-09-12 13:25:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,291
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16873710
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inkedinserendipity/pseuds/inkedinserendipity
Summary: The THB take Angus with them to investigate a moderately-promising lead on one of the remaining Relics. Previously, their escapades preceding a discovery of an actual Relic have been wild, to say the least - they never expected to find one on this, what was supposed to be a routine mission.This mission is about to become anything but.





	1. The Dagger

**Author's Note:**

> The beginning of a massive uploading to this site, what with tumblr maybe going down in all. Was originally going to be a standalone, but then I got shouted into making a second part, so that'll go up in a couple days too. Enjoy!

_They don’t really care about you, you know._ **  
**

The voice is cold - the cold that comes after holding burning metal forr too long. It is the sort of alluring that glints from the razor’s end of a knife, beautiful and deadly.

Angus is not stupid. He knows that this knife is pointed directly at him.

_You’re wrong_ , he tells the dagger, whose hilt flakes off into a pointed handguard with dozens of steel-capped edges. He can do this. If they can pick up Relics, so can he.  _They care. Of course they care._

_And yet they cast you aside_ , and there’s a hint of amusement in the voice, now.  _You think the wizard cares for you? You think that for you, Angus McDonald, he changes his callous ways? That he teaches you because he cares for you? So long away from danger has made you soft, Angus. You forget how cruel the world is._

_They’re not cruel,_  Angus says. Outside his perception, his hand hovers inches from the handle. The enchanted metal glows blue-gray beneath his palms. Far from his range of hearing, a trio of voices clamor for his attention, but he cannot quite hear them over the sinew-slick voice of the dagger. _They’re kind. They’re just bad at showing it._

A laugh, inside his head and out. Angus feels his lips moving of his own accord, though his feet remain planted on the ground. Is he speaking? He doesn’t think so. He can’t - he can’t tell.

_The cleric wishes you dead,_  the voice says, now the sweetness of poisoned honey, of the final blissful blow before death.  _You know how he envies you. He knows your intelligence, Angus, and he wishes you gone._

_That’s not true!_

_He has said as much before. To your face, even!_

_He didn’t mean it. He - he doesn’t mean it, he’s just goofing. That’s what they do! They make good good goofs. They’re good people._

_Did he not?_  the voice asks, chuckling.  _Then why do you protest so, Angus? You’ve used this tactic many times before in interrogations of your own, boy detective, so riddle me this - feathers are ruffled when the truth comes out, Angus. Why do your feathers stick up straight?_

He takes a deep breath that chokes around the edges, through a throat that isn’t entirely he is. The nameless cries behind him grow louder in intensity and yet fade, quiet. He pays them little mind.

_They love me,_  Angus protests.  _Merle - Merle’s just a little mean sometimes, that’s how he is with everyone. And Taako cooks for me! He makes me cookies when I’m feeling bad and taught me how to do magic and -_

_He does not cook for those he loves._  Angus hardly feels two fingers clasp around the handle of the dagger, pick it up. In the pale moonlight the blade is so, so lovely.  _Oh, Angus, love has made you blind. He has told you before that he fears cooking for those he loves - why do you hoist up his willingness to cook for you as a badge of honor? He would see you dead and not care._

_No!_  Angus wails. Conjuring up counters grows harder and harder as his memories - the good memories - fade. A growing part of his mind is enthralled with the dagger. He runs a finger over the blade, and to him it is blunt, but despite this evidence he knows it is wickedly sharp. This dagger - it doesn’t want to hurt him.  _Even - even if Taako and Merle, even if they don’t, Magnus -_

_Ah, the human fighter. Magnus Burnsides. You saw a brother in him, yet he harasses you without remorse. The others join him._

_They - no. They love me, they do!_

_Prove it, detective._

_They give me my books back! And -_  it’s getting harder to remember, now. The lessons with Taako, the way his ears stick up when he sees Angus coming even as his face hardens. The joy on Magnus’s face when he spies Angus in the library, the way he hoists Angus onto his shoulders even when Angus protests that this is a library, he’s supposed to be  _quiet_ -

They only ever act so when there is no one else around, Angus realizes, the realization sapping his fight. They’re ashamed of him. They’re ashamed to know him.

Outside his awareness, his shoulders slump. He’d been so young and so stupid. Somehow, with all his time on the moonbase, he’d forgotten how awful the world could be. He’d let these - these people make him believe they loved him and all along, it’d been a trick, hadn’t it? Just another goof. Just another good, good joke - except this time, the punchline isn’t funny.

_They love me,_  he says desperately.

Do they?

Emotion is the antithesis of reason. He knows this, and yet he let it corrupt him. All this time, the evidence was right there - a jigsaw puzzle with a thousand pieces waiting to be solved, collecting dust while he gallivanted around in a perfect moonbase of his own imagination. Of course they don’t love him.

_Angus, dear Angus - how did you not realize, detective? You have read your books, you have heard your stories, even the stories that the world cannot remember. The scientist, Lucas Miller - he listened to his heart, and to the world it brought ruin._

It’s right, Angus realizes. He knows, as though he’s known all along. They don’t care at all.

With the precision of gears clicking together, his last finger taps into place on the hilt of the dagger, and he raises it confidently, curiously. He’s never seen an artifact quite this powerful, and even though the voice is now gone it is still magnificent. The light from the moon shatters into a thousand tiny crystals in the moonlight, scattering around the room. It’s beautiful.

(Angus can feel himself fading.)

He turns.

He’s met with three familiar faces that he realizes, now, aren’t familiar at all.

They’re shouting a multitude of things - angry, scared, panicked. They’re so loud. Are they ever quiet?

“Stop,” he says, the dagger slipping between his lips and prying them open, speaking words that aren’t his - though the dagger stays by his side. Curious.

(Angus can feel himself burning.)

They stop. They listen. That’s a first.

“I won’t bother explaining,” he says. Is he Angus? Who is he? “The game’s up.”

He levels a dagger at them. None of them raise their weapons. An odd time to pretend to care.

The fighter is pleading. “Please,” he’s saying. “C’mon, kiddo, just drop the dagger. You can - can you hear me?”

The elf: “Pumpkin, you gotta put it down. You’re strong, you’re stronger than this, boychik, come on back to us, yeah?”

The cleric is the only one who draws his weapon - a book. A bible. His lips move in some sort of invocation. A prayer, maybe. He’s not worried - the cleric’s spells never work.

He says as much. The cleric flinches. He files that away and takes three steps forward. They take one step back. Another three, another one, another three, another one - and they’re right in front of each other, now. Eye-to-eye, face-to-face. They still don’t see him.

(Angus can feel himself screaming.)

There’s an odd sort of haze over his mind. A forced complacency. The front of his mind is at peace; pedalling his steps forward, raising the dagger toward their throats. The rest of him is shouting himself hoarse.

“Let’s make this quick, shall we?” His voice molds out words that are not his.

“C’mon, kid,” the elf says, eyes wide and frantic, and he still has not drawn his staff. “Angus, listen, just put it down, we can help - ” he says, before his words stop entirely.

Funny. In their panic, they leave their nicknames to the side. Just this once, they speak his name out loud.

Funny. Angus no longer has a name.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This time featuring copious Angus + Taako! Ango does a stabby, but it's all fine in the end.

Taako takes a Mage Hand to the throat with a grimace, and on anyone else the irony would be delicious  **—** student rising above the master, using his own spells against him, et cetera et fucking cetera **—** but Taako doesn’t really like dramatic irony when it works against him.

Behind him, Merle flips frantically through the pages of his Bible, soulwood fingers too clumsy, vision too blurry without his glasses. Magnus steps forward. Magnus gets buffeted back. It’d be funny if it weren’t sad. He keeps trying with dogged determination, except Angus pushes him away easily.

No. That  **—** whatever it is, that  _Relic_ **—** isn’t Angus. It’s got him, for sure, but it isn’t him.

And just like Ango’s Mage Hand, Taako’s gonna test just how tight that grip is. 

“C’mon, pumpkin,” he says, diverting a Whirlwind as it tears his hat off his head. He has to shout to make himself heard. “C’mon, Agnes, you in there?”

“Not anymore, sir! It’s a bit too late for this now!”

“You  **—** you know they were just goofs, Ango,” he says, as soothingly as he knows how, and Magnus should be doing this, this is  **—** like, this is his  _thing_ , but Magnus is about as magic-proof as a fuckin’ dung beetle and Merle’s never liked the kid anyway, so it’s all up to Taako. Again. “We were just goofing. I mean, we gave your books back, didn’t we?”

“It was really very easy, sir,” says Angus’s voice with Angus’s mouth, bright and cheery. He blasts Taako with Magic Missile and  _ha_ , real original, fuckso. He follows right up with a Fireball from one outstretched palm and Taako whips up his Umbrastaff, skirting the flames along its edges. Heat dances along his legs, shrivelling his skin, but he inches forward behind his makeshift shield. If he can just get to Angus, hug the kid,  _something…_. 

Over the roar of the flames, it continues, “It didn’t take long at all for me to convince him he meant nothing! You three really were awful to him.”

Gods, this fucker even  _sounds_ like Angus. Taako wants to tell it to stop, command it to stop saying  _sir_ , deepen its voice —  _stop taking Angus’s voice_  — but shakes his head. Right now, he has to reach Angus.

“Look, I know we were shitty. We…we kinda are shitty, all of us. I mean, what kinda goofuses let a whole town blow up, y’know? Yeah. Real shitty. But we love you, kid. I mean that.”

“Sounds fake, sir,” Angus says, letting loose a lightning bolt. Taako shakes out his hand as electricity sparks up the handle, wincing. He’s so close. He peeks out from behind the Umbrastaff.

“You still in there, D’jango?” he asks. Magnus hits the wall and Taako winces sympathetically. There’s commotion as Merle rushes to heal him but Taako doesn’t hear it, focused entirely on Angus and the wand half-drawn at his side.

“That’s not gonna be enough, sir!” the voice chirps. “You did too much damage with your words already, you’re hardly going to sway him — ”

Angus chokes, doubles over. The winds dissipate, the fires around him dim. Taako steps the rest of the way toward him. This close, he’s breathing shallowly.

“Really?” he asks, broken, quiet.

Taako takes another cautious step forward, lowering his Umbrastaff. His arms are shaking. “Really, kiddo,” he says softly. One step; another, and another. Angus looks up at him, eyes huge and welling.

He’s shaking. They’re both shaking. Exertion, exhaustion, fear; maybe all three. Angus sniffs. “I’m so sorry,” he says, surveying the room, wrapping his arms around himself, shoulders hunched. “I — I didn’t mean, I know, I love you too, I just — I took the dagger and I just wanted to help….”

“Shh,” Taako says, and takes another step. Kneels. Opens his arms. “‘s okay, kiddo.”

“I just wanted to help,” Angus whispers, collapsing into Taako’s embrace, “I just — you and Magnus and Merle do it all the time, and I thought, maybe this time you wouldn’t have to, because I love you, I just — I’m so sorry — ”

“No harm done, kiddo,” Taako says, running a hand through his hair soothingly. “All sorts of forgiveness up in here tonight. Don’t even worry about it.”

“Oh thank goodness,” Angus says, still sniffing pathetically, and buries his face in Taako’s shoulder, and sinks the dagger into his back.

Huh.

“Oh,” Taako breathes. He’s actually surprised.

“You made that easy,” not-Angus laughs. His hand, still holding the dagger, twists.

Pain ricochets along his back and he arches, fingers seizing over Angus’s shoulder, but the boy holds him tighter. He can’t writhe away.

“Fuck,” he chokes, as the cold steel makes a home in its back, burning along his spine. 

His back aches, dripping and bleeding, and there’s a fire spreading slow and steady through his veins. He wonders, briefly, if this is how they’d felt before they died; he wonders, briefly, if he deserves this.

He holds a raw-eyed child in his arms and thinks, yes, he does.

Taako coughs. Angus pulls away from him, and Taako lists forward, arms limp at his side. His senses dull for a moment, tile digging against numb knees, and he hears Merle shout. 

Then, through washed-out hearing he hears a gasp, a strangled scream, and two small hands on his sides, pulling him back up. “  **—** sir?” comes a panicked voice, high-pitched and desperate, and yep, there’s his boy.

This is what he gets for trusting people, he thinks, and grins ruefully, even though it hurts. Even though everything hurts, heat like black fire searing through his veins. 

Somehow, he doesn’t regret it at all.

Even with his head bowed, Angus’s face swims into his field of vision. He’s sobbing, lips forming desperate words, and Taako recognizes his name, shouted over and over again. “‘s okay,” he slurs, on his knees, hanging limp against Angus. He can’t hear himself speak. He can’t hear anything.

Angus’s hands are two bright spots of warmth on his shoulders. He’s growing cold already. Soon he’ll be dead.

He looks up, ignores the screaming protest in his neck, and smiles. “Proud of you, pumpkin,” he rasps, because Angus should know this, at least, before he dies.

Angus will know how much it means, because Taako trusts him implicitly.

He topples forward, the last of his strength leaving, his blood curdling in his veins, pain spearing through his head, and is gone before his forehead strikes the ground.

* * *

He wakes up, which is a surprise; which, in and of itself, is no surprise at all. Taako’s been surprised by his continued existence plenty of times, but he really hadn’t thought he was surviving that one. Stabbed by a Grand Relic and all that.

“Huh,” he says. There’s pain in his back, still, and something warm and wet slithering down his spine, but it’s not overwhelming and he can stand. He does so. He laughs. “Was pretty sure I’d beefed it there.”

The world around him is slate-grey; featureless, and blank. This…isn’t very concerning. He’s been in plenty of completely blank rooms before, most of them created by gods. He’s just looking around for a beautiful mass of white hair, keen ears pricked for the sound of needles, when a flicker of movement catches his eye.

Magnus is dead.

Taako chokes on his own breath. His handkerchief is torn, the gash over his left eye matched by a deeper one along his right, his chest stained with blood. A small “Magnus?” tears its way from Taako’s throat before he remembers, with a small laugh,  _right_. The dagger. Illusion magic. None of this is real.

Then he sees Merle, old body broken and shattered, and even though he knows it’s not real he believes it a little less.

“Well fuck this,” Taako says, turning pointedly from the body on the ground, turning pointedly from thoughts of a warm laugh and a gruff voice and wisdom at the strangest times. “Look, your gig’s up. I know this is an illusion, homie, you gotta let me go, that’s how illusions work.”

There’s a shift in his vision and Taako does not turn. He taps his foot against the floor, folds his arms. “I did it, I solved your fuckin’ illusion puzzle,” he snaps. “Time for you to send me off to my fuckin’ final destination, and  _fuck_ you, by the way, I’m fuckin’ dating Death, so you can’t do shit. Once I get there my man is gonna fuck you up. Whoever the hell you are.”

There’s no response; no silvery voice from the heavens. Nothing but slate grey and a body in his peripheries, insistent and stark.

“You’ve got a shit sense of humor,” he grumbles, and turns, and his heart drops to see Kravitz, red eyes dulled in true death, chest arched through with a burning blade. As soon as Taako gets a good eyeful, pretends his heart isn’t pounding in his chest, he vanishes. “What, so I just gotta look? Lemme tell you, my  _dude_ , if you’re just cyclin’ through all the people ol’ Taako cares about then we’re not gonna be here for very long.”

Something appears in his vision but Taako doesn’t look at it. Instead, he fishes a Stone out of his shirt, presses it. It rings with Magnus’s frequency, but there’s no response.

He swears, dials Merle. Nothing. Maybe it’s a plane thing, he reasons, and tries Kravitz, and it sputters out three weak tones before fading again.

“Okay,” Taako says out loud, pushing down mounting panic. He — they’re not  _dead_ , they’re not actually dead. If anyone’s for-good dead in this sitch, it’s Taako for sure. 

But there’s something rattling about seeing his friend’s corpses and then not being able to talk to them. Normally when he gets these nightmares he just calls up his boyfriend or wriggles his way into Magnus’s arms, just to reassure himself, but there’s a problem right now, and that problem is that Taako’s fuckhead friends  _aren’t picking up_.

“Oh,” he says. “This is — you’re just doing my nightmares on me,” he says. He laughs, sharp and vicious. “You picked the wrong fuckin’ target, asshole, Taako don’t care about shit! I can count on one hand the number of people he’d actually care about beefing it,” he says, and steels himself to see Angus, but at least it won’t be permanent, seeing his beautiful boy dead. At least Taako managed to free him — however inadvertently — from the thrall.

It’s not Angus.

It’s a woman whose face he does not know.

He stares at her, uncomprehending, unable to see pas the fog shrouding her features, and when she vanishes, he lifts a hand to his eyes and feels tears.

“What?” he asks, voice cracking. “Fuckin’ — that was a cheap shot, I didn’t even  _know_ her!”

Another body appears at his feet, this one wearing denim pants and Taako  _aches_ , not understanding why, shoulders trembling, and then — and then Davenport, mustache askew in a way Taako’s never seen it and hand wrapped around a badge that blurs before Taako gets a good look and then the Director, Lucretia, young and wrapped in her blue robe with ruby earrings in her ears, and — and she looks peaceful and Taako is struck with an awful sense of permanence, confused and hurt and aching, why does this  _matter_ , he doesn’t  _care_ about these people, it shouldn’t matter to him if they’re dead for good or for a little while.

He’s on his knees, shuddering, and then Angus appears.

He chokes out a strangled noise, reaching for him before he can stop himself, but his hand passes straight through Angus’s shoulder. “Fuck you,” he whispers, drawing trembling fists back to his thighs, “fuck you,  _fuck_ you — ”

And then there’s nothing but slate gray and utter silence.

“That’s it?” Taako says into the silence, mustering his bravado, shoving down shouts of rage or pain or fear, he doesn’t know what and he’s  _not gonna find out_. “That’s all you got? Fuckin’ pathetic!”

There’s no response.

“That’s just rude,” he says. “You’re gonna keep someone locked up here, you should at least give ‘em the courtesy of responding, chucklefuck!”

He’s very good at ignoring things; he’s Taako, from TV, and that’s one of his many talents. He does his level best to ignore the voice — his voice — that reminds him what his worst dreams are about, because denial is powerful in anyone and overwhelming in him.

“Awful hospitality,” Taako sneers. “Dropping me here and making me watch all this shit? For what? You gettin’ some kinda fucked-up enjoyment from this?”

Nothing. That voice whispers louder.

“Coward!” he shouts. “Show yourself!”

He sits, heavy. He calls — speaks — whispers to the void, and he doesn’t know where he is, he doesn’t know  _what_ he is, if he’s dead or alive, or if —

“No,” he says, as firmly as he can muster, which isn’t in this moment very firmly at all. “This isn’t forever.”

This isn’t his forever. This isn’t his eternity, he — he’ll get out. He’ll find a way.

But the void has no give and no voice and when Taako sinks to the ground, wraps his arms around his shoulders and ignores the spiking pain in his back and shuts his eyes, squeezes them tight, he knows this: he is alone.

* * *

He stares at the ground for — he doesn’t know how long. He focuses at first on keeping it together, but that urge fades after a while, because he drifts; thinks of nothing, pushing away thoughts that this is hell, and that he’s earned it, because he certainly has. There are no walls around him to rage against. There are no thoughts he can conceive that will break him from this prison. So he sits, head between his knees, breathing ragged and eyes stinging, and stares at the ground.

It would be fine if there were — something. Anything. Hell, he’d take the whispers of the damned over this blank, vacant nothing. But there’s no sound and when Taako scrapes a hand across the ground beneath him there’s no sensation and there’s no smell, no taste of salt on the wind, just the ringing in his ears of utter silence. Earlier he’d wished that his friends were back, dead as they were, only to feel something as he’d brush his fingertips through their hair.

Now he doesn’t wish for much of anything at all. Wishing takes thought, you see, and Taako does not think about how he is very, very alone.

He’d like to say it takes the void a long time to break him. Truth is, he doesn’t know. Alone among gray and absolute nothing he cries, and screams, and when his voice goes hoarse he stops and sits and stares at the ground. Whatever gods rule this place aren’t listening.

Taako does not let himself wonder if there are no gods here.

There’s a flicker in his vision, and for the first time in a long time, Taako takes a breath. He laughs hoarsely. He turns, and finds himself staring at his own dead body.

“Think that makes me vain,” he grins, voice crackling with disuse  **—** or maybe from skating over the same vocal cords he’d torn raw.

“Sir?”

It takes longer than it should. It takes eleven quick footfalls for Taako to realize that  _these aren’t his nightmares_ , that the Magnus that takes his place spread-eagled and dead on the floor isn’t a conjuration of his own mind.

It takes another two and two arms tight around his shoulders to realize he is not alone.

“Hey, Agnes,” he says, and turns and holds him. “Miss me?”

“Please don’t goof, sir,” whispers the voice of Angus McDonald, choked and breaking. He’s holding Taako so tight that he can’t breathe fully, but Taako is just glad to hold him. He buries his face in Angus’s shoulder with perhaps a bit more earnestness than he means to, but he trusts Angus, still.

Once Angus had buried that dagger in his back and left it, he had come back to himself. This Angus presses two hands on his shoulderblades and weeps and  _this_ , Taako knows, is the truth.

“Sorry, kiddo,” he murmurs, running a hand through the boy’s curly hair. “I — oof. Had a hell of a trip, D’jango.”

Angus sniffs, shaking in his arms. He pulls back and scrubs at his tiny face with the back of one wrist and Taako can’t help himself, already cut raw by this awful place; he reaches out and wipes a stray tear from his face, eyebrows knitting in what he will never admit to be concern. “None of that, kid. No tears here.”

“You’re an awful hypocrite, sir,” Angus hiccups, and grabs Taako’s hand and holds it tightly.

“Don’t make me lose a limb too, Agnes,” Taako grumbles, wringing a half-laugh half-sob from him. Angus doesn’t let go of his hand. Taako doesn’t want him to.

“I’m so sorry,” Angus whispers. “I’m so sorry, I — I thought I could help, and I know, I’m saying the same stuff the Relic did, but it’s really me, sir, and I’m so sorry I just wanted – ”

“Hey. Kid. Breathe.”

“I am,” Angus says, taking deep shuddering gasps of air. He leans forward and Taako catches his forehead with his own. “I am, I’m breathing, Taako, I — I couldn’t control it and I’m so sorry — ”

“Eh, forget about it,” Taako says, waving a nonchalant hand through the air between the two of them. Now that Angus is here and he’s not alone he stabilizes, solid and secure. The kid’s clinging to him like a lifeline and it goes both ways, both tethering each other to shore. 

Angus’s eyes close, and unseen, Taako smiles. He rests his free hand on Angus’s shoulder, tracing fancy-boy stitches around his shoulder. “All peachy-keen now, bubbeleh. Nothin’ to worry about.”

“I’m sorry,” he chokes in a whisper.

“Apologize again and I’ll Magic Missile your ass.”

That wrings another chuckle out of him, cracked. He pulls Taako closer, and Taako holds him until the shaking stops.

It takes him too long to realize.

“Angus,” he says slowly, “what did you do?”

“What do you mean?”

Real panic rises in him, hot and sharp. “How did you get here?” Taako snaps, holding on to his hand tight. “Angus,  _what did you do?”_

“Nothing you wouldn’t have done, sir,” Angus says, and Taako wants to shake him.

“Fucking — don’t play these games with me,” he snarls, a violent nausea churning through him. “Tell me, Angus!”

Angus looks at him, then at their hands, clasped together, and offers Taako his palm. There’s a scratch on it, still bleeding.

“Your soul left your body,” Angus explains, quietly. Taako stares at his palm and shoves down the urge to throw up. “We didn’t know where to, and Merle can’t cast Greater Restoration, so I told them to call a sphere and I followed you.”

“That was stupid,” Taako snaps, brittle and caustic. “I thought you were a smart boy, Angus! This — ” he shakes Angus’s hand in his face “ — this was  _stupid_ , Angus!”

“You were screaming.”

“I — what?”

“You were screaming, sir,” Angus says. “For all of us. It was awful. I c-couldn’t — I couldn’t watch and do nothing.”

“Sure you could,” he says, “just — fuckin’ — don’t do  _shit_ , it’s real easy, I do it all the time. Please — Angus, tell me you had a plan, or something.”

“Of course I did, sir,” Angus says, looking adorably offended, adjusting his glasses with his uninjured hand. “I am still the world’s greatest detect — “ he breaks off and looks down. Clears his throat. “I’m still good at what I do, sir. Merle and Magnus are taking our bodies back to the moonbase and the Director has her best healers in the launchpad already and everything’s going to be fine, sir. Once they stabilize us they can pop our souls back in.”

“Then it sounds like we got some time to kill, huh, pumpkin.”

“A little bit, sir,” Angus says, with all the professionalism that makes him the best in the first place. He, like Taako, is often underestimated. “It shouldn’t take more than fifteen minutes for Magnus and Merle to wake us up, and cast a Greater Restoration, but given that you’re inside a demiplane, sir — “

“Time moves differently, got it,” Taako says.

Angus nods. “Yes.”

Silence. Again; but less pressing this time, because now there is the sound of someone else breathing in the same space. The worst of the horrible fear that had clenched at his insides and whispered  _alone, alone, alone again_  is gone, dissipated.

“You’re still the world’s greatest, boychik,” Taako says, and glances at him sidelong. Angus’s face is carefully blank. “You know that.”

“Sorry?”

“Detective,” Taako clarifies, and sits next to him. Sitting, he comes up to Angus’s shoulders, and it strikes him now — Angus’s shoulders hunched over, jaw firmly locked — just how small Angus is. “You’re still the world’s greatest detective, bubbeleh.”

“I appreciate it, sir,” Angus says.

“I mean it.”

“Thank you.”

Taako sighs. Angus’s wand, capped with a five-pointed star, hangs on a lanyard around his neck. “Sit, kiddo.”

Angus sits. As he does, he rests his hand on his knee, paints the fabric ruby-red.

“It wasn’t your fault.”

“I know, sir.”

“Do you?”

Angus turns away, and Taako studies the side of his face intently. He’s probably the worst person to be here, having this talk — emotions are Magnus’s forte, gods’ sakes, and at least Merle would have some Pan-ly wisdom to dispense, but Taako’s just…winging it.

This isn’t something he wants to wing.

But he knows what it is to leave open wounds festering, and this has to be stitched tight before they’re pulled from this space, or it won’t ever heal properly.

“I should’ve known,” Angus whispers. He wraps his arms around his knees and buries his face into them, glasses just barely peeking out over his forearms. “I knew they were dangerous but you and Magnus and Merle never seem to have trouble with it, sir, and I know that last time you tried to take a Relic it tempted you horribly and made you hurt and I didn’t want that to happen, I thought — “ he sniffs, “ — I thought, you know, I can handle it, I’m smart — b-because I am, I can outthink it, but it got me, and I a-almost…I almost k-killed you.”

Taako scoots closer to him, pulls the boy against his side. After a long moment, Angus turns and buries his face in Taako’s chest, trying his best to hide the shaking in his shoulders. He’s crying silently.

There are implications in that fact that Taako does not need to be a detective to tease out, and he hates every one.

Most children do not cry silently.

But that is a thought for later, not for now, so Taako runs a hand through his hair. “Yeah,” he says after a long while. “Yeah, I mean — yep. That sure is what happened, Ango. And it sucked. But that doesn’t make you any less of a detective.”

“It makes me a pretty poor detective, sir,” Angus whispers without taking his face out of Taako’s shirt. “I can’t — d-detectives are supposed to help people, and I almost k-killed you.”

“Yeah, but you didn’t. Remember that whole thing about dry spells, bubbeleh? You got the longest dry spell outta anyone I ever met and that’s…I mean, for people with a moral code, y’know, that’s a real good thing. Good people, that is. And you’re good people, Angus.”

“Maybe,” he says. He sits up. “I’m sorry, sir. I shouldn’t h-have — that was — “

“Stop,” Taako says, and takes the boy by the shoulders, staring directly into those red-rimmed eyes. “Stop apologizing. Look. Remember what I told you, kid? I’m proud of you. Still am.”

“But how?” Angus asks, desperate. “How? Sir, I could have — you almost died! If it weren’t for the Bureau and the Director — “

“If it weren’t for you, Mags and Merle would be dead,” Taako interrupts. “Listen to me, kiddo, ‘cause I mean this. You shook off the thrall of that thing, which is — I am making absolutely no exaggeration when I say I’ve never seen anyone do that before. You hear me, Ango? No one.”

“But…” Angus says. “I still…Taako, sir, you almost….”

“Kid, if I held a grudge against everyone who tried to kill me ol’ Taako would have no friends,” he says. “Which I don’t, by the way. Have friends. Taako deffo doesn’t do friends, but, like…yeah.” Angus smiles at that, a small quirk of the lips. “Would have less friends than zero. Negative friends? Ango, how do I acquire negative friends? Don’t answer that.”

“I could look into it for you, sir.”

“I’d much rather you keep lookin’ into how to make that falafel I asked you to whip up last Tuesday but you haven’t made much progress on that either now, have you, boychik.”

Angus lets out a surprised giggle at the reprimand. “I tried that recipe again, sir! Several times!” he protests.

“Still inedible, Ango. You can’t keep forgetting the chickpeas.” He tweaks Angus’s nose. “Do better next time.”

“You’re incredibly rude, Taako. Magnus enjoyed it.”

“Magnus’s favorite animal is a dog, Angus. Therefore, his favorite type of food is probably dog food, which is…” Taako looks up, pretends to do some mental calculations, then nods. “About what your last try tasted like, kiddo.”

That earns him a chuckle, then a sniffle, then an earnest hug that nearly bowls him over. “I’m sorry,” Angus says, again, voice muffled as Taako hugs him back. “I know you’re going to tell me to stop saying that but I really am sorry, sir.”

“Yeah, and I’m sorry you stabbed yourself to come get my dumb ass, but we can’t all get what we want, now can we.”

“You can’t blame me, sir. You sounded very bad. You…were calling for us.”

“You were hearing things, Ango.”

“I am not, sir, but I don’t think you want me to go in to detail.”

Taako considers it — he knows what he sounds like waking up from nightmares, the sharp harsh end of his own screams — and shrugs. “Probably not, boychik.” He pinches Angus’s ear. “When did you get so smart?”

“I learned how to read when I was one and a half years old, sir.”

“Off,” Taako says immediately, pushing Angus away. “Off. Off, get off, you’re going to infect me with — motivation and drive and, I dunno, emotions or some shit — “

“Better to be motivated than lazy, sir,” Angus says serenely, and holds on tight.

“You’re lucky I’m lazy enough for the both of us,” Taako grumbles, and lets him.

* * *

In this dimension it’s far longer than fifteen minutes before their rescue arrives. Most of that time is passed in silence, and Angus doesn’t once let go of Taako. Eventually Angus maneuvers himself into Taako’s lap, face buried in his chest, and Taako tells himself it’s because he just saw Angus dead that he keeps threading his hands through the boy’s hair, down his back, hushing him when his shoulders start to shake.

The return to their living bodies is abrupt, and Taako only has a moment to panic when Angus is ripped from him before his eyes flash open. He doubles over, breathing harshly, and gasps “Angus —  _is Angus_ — ”

“He’s fine,” Merle says, and Taako recognizes his voice before the heartbeat fully subsides in his ears, one soulwood hand patting his back. “Magnus is with him, just over there. You’re both gonna be fine. You and the kid both.”

“Right,” Taako says. Breathes in, breathes out. Then: “No, I don’t — fuck that, I don’t care about the kid.”

“Mhmm.”

“Oh, fuck you.” He straightens carefully, pleased to feel no pain in his back. “Can I stand up?”

“Unless you got plans to get stabbed in the near future, you’re good to go, kid.”

“Don’t call me kid, old man.” He tests his weight on two feet, then stands when he doesn’t keel over immediately. “Good thing we at least got competent clerics on the base.”

“Fuck you, kid.”

He pats Merle’s head condescendingly before making his way to the mountain of a man standing next to Angus. “Taako!” Magnus says, grinning to see him. Taako rolls his eyes. “I’m so glad you’re okay!”

“You and me both, bubbeleh,” he says airily, and waves Magnus away. “How’re you doin’, boychik?”

“Better, sir,” Angus says earnestly. His hand is bandaged and his eyes are clear and when he looks at Taako, he’s smiling. Taako sits next to Angus, tolerates it when the boy leans against his shoulder. “Much better.”

“Good,” Taako says, and is surprised to realize how much he means it. He pulls Angus closer, rests his cheek on the top of Angus’s head. “Good.”

* * *

Taako feigns pains in his leg when Merle offers him to hobble back on over to his own bed, splaying himself dramatically over Angus and knocking the book out of his hands. He demands Angus tell him a story, and, rolling his eyes good-naturedly, Angus does; tells him a tale of Life and Death and the love between them. At the end, Taako tweaks his ear for being cheeky and refuses to speak another word about his no-longer-nonexistent love life, no matter how much Angus prods him.

Angus falls asleep with his head tilted against Taako’s shoulder. Taako casts Silence around the bed and bookmarks his page, setting it aside. 

Several hours later Angus awakes with a strangled shout, and before the tears even start, Taako wraps him in his arms, rocking the boy until he breathes normally again.

Angus thanks him, and Taako tells him to shut up.

Angus falls back asleep with a smile, and Taako watches over him the whole night through.

**Author's Note:**

> @inkedinserendipity on tumblr, catch me there babes!


End file.
